I recently swapped out my iPad for a Surface 2 and must admit I haven’t looked back once. I stumbled across a neat little trick that allows me to use the Play To functionality to stream content from the Surface 2 to my XBMC media center (which is running on a projector in my living room).

The XBMC Media Center shows up under Play Devices as “Not Windows certified”

Playing to non-certified devices is still possible, however. This is done simply by adding a registry key. To do this, go to your start screen, type regedit and hit enter on the search result (regedit.exe). Now navigate to the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PlayTo

If that key doesn’t exist just create it. Then create a new 32-bit DWORD value called ShowNonCertifiedDevices and set its value to 1.

Now if you try to Play To again you should see your device on the list.

Now you can stream videos from your Surface 2 straight to your DLNA-enabled TV or Media Center device. Awesome right?